Oakland A's: Needing to "Get Lucky" with Pitchers in 2012

With some exceptions, a successful Oakland A's team has been more of a pitching team that a hitting team. With the absence of a Rickey Henderson or a Jason Giambi from the lineup, that is likely to be the case in 2012 if the club is to have a successful season.

In 2011, the As ranked about 10th in the majors in most pitching categories and 20th to 25th in most batting categories. The pitchers will have to step up their game a bit, first to get to the top eight to make themselves playoff worthy, and second, to another level to compensate for hitting that even with new, young talent may only make it to the mid-teens. (The rotation was good enough to have gotten a good-hitting team like the New York Yankees to the post season.)

Brandon McCarthy and Gio Gonzalez form a strong top of the rotation. McCarthy has an exceptionally low walk rate, and Gonzalez has an unusually high strikeout rate. This, together with the fact that both give up less than their share of home runs, makes them premium pitchers.

Trevor Cahill pitches enough innings to be a good starter, but needs to improve in spots. His main weakness is that he gives up almost 12 home runs for every 100 fly balls (McCarthy and Gonzalez yield long balls at just more than half that rate.) This problem is aggravated by the fact that he walks too many batters.

Guillermo Moscoso pitches well enough most of the time, but he needs to extend himself beyond the 128 innings he pitched as a rookie in 2011. Most of all, he needs to avoid "lasting inning problems," (a rapid decline in the last inning of a game he pitches.)

With Brett Anderson still a question mark for at least part, if not essentially all of 2012, Josh Outman needs to step up his game. It appears that he is beginning to do so, after some shuttling back and forth between the majors and minors, kind of like the Pittsburgh Pirates' Charlie Morton.

Finally, the As have to keep (and deploy) either Dallas Braden or Rich Harden, possibly both, if they come cheap enough. They are two part-time pitchers that are together the equivalent of one full-time hurler. Even though there would technically be six starters on staff, it would be de facto a five man rotation, assuming that Braden and Harden won't necessarily be able to start during the same parts of the season, and even one they do overlap, there will be a "moral certainty" that one of the other five will be out for injuries or other reasons.

If Cahill, Moscoso and Outman can rise to the top of their game, and if Braden and/or Harden can provide a veteran "reserve," the Oakland As might have a chance in 2012 to make the playoffs in 2012. Depending, of course, on what the lineup can do.